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Home > Blogs > Dawging the Browns > Archives > 2009 > August > 03 > Entry
Practice tackling? Mangini says yes
Finding the right balance in terms of how much live tackling there should be in training camp is sometimes difficult.
Romeo Crennel, who coached the Browns for four seasons and never got them to the playoffs, did not believe in full-contact scrimmages. There was never an emphasis on tackling in camp and it seemed to show up during the season.
Butch Davis, the coach before Crennel, loved scrimmages, thought they were important as a means of getting the team ready. The Browns actually scrimmaged another team under Butch. But his results weren’t much better than Crennel’s, although the Browns did make the playoffs in 2002, the only year since they came back in 1999.
Eric Mangini, the latest coach, seems to be winning over some doubters with his physical approach in the early days of camp. The Browns are conducting actual tackling drills this summer, and I’m thinking it can’t hurt. The team might not be very good, but at least maybe the tackling — woeful for the most part in recent years — might improve.
“Sometimes we’ll do the tackling drill ‘thud,’ so you’re going through the wrap-up, but you’re not bringing the player to the ground,” Mangini said. “Sometimes it’s live tackling, so it’s a balance between the two.”
Getting players injured is usually cited as a reason to keep camp contact to a minimum, but Mangini sees it as a risk worth taking.
“Some of these things are things that you have to do,” he said. “It’s what we do. It’s a contact sport and you have to practice contact. You try to do as much of it as you can without getting to the point where you’re adding risk and also try to maintain the guys’ bodies and things along those lines.
“It is a delicate balance that you’re always trying to adjust and fix and react to how the team’s feeling. All those different things come up.”
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Comments
By quantoid
August 4, 2009 11:37 AM | Link to this
Enjoyed the overview.By Bart
August 7, 2009 1:04 PM | Link to this
It’s about time